Devoted to the unexpected details that help to make life in the city worth living

Thursday, 27 March 2014

Wareham House, Carroun Road SW8

Peter Peri's footballers look almost comically dated now, with their long shorts, long socks and heavy leather boots. They were created in 1952 to brighten up a post-war council block.

The sparring players were built up in multi-coloured concrete troweled on to wire mesh secured to the wall.

The footballers face not onto the public space of Carroun Road but the internal courtyard, whether so it would be better appreciated by the residents or simply because that was where the only suitable space was available is not known. Unfortunately it means this work of art looks out over the bins.

Note the sensitively-located security light. I like to think it was put there by the same maintenance man who put up this nearby notice, with typical Sarf London subversive humour:

Peter Peri's life was largely defined by flight from oppression. He was born a Jew in Hungary in 1899, but it was not his religion but his left-wing politics that forced him to flee the country, first to Vienna and Paris, then, in 1922, to Wiemar Berlin. Htler's rise to power in 1933 sent signals he could not ignore and he and his wife slipped off to Britain, arriving with the clothes they stood up in and little else.
Having been forced to move round Europe because of his avowal of Communism, when the brutality of Stalin's rule began to be revealed he abandoned Marx and became a Quaker, attracted by their pacifism and commitment to bettering the lot of working people.